Cancer Experiment Secures Research Award for Medical Students

Cancer Experiment Secures Research Award for Medical Students

Laboratory experiments with stem cells that slows cancer cell growth, has secured five medical students from Aalborg University a prestigious talent award at a conference in Berlin. The Group's promising findings surprised even them, and now they must help to further investigation of the potential.

The five students from the Medicine with Industrial Specialization has dealt with from fat effect on a certain type of cancer along with their supervisor, Associate Professor Meg Duroux from the Laboratory for Stem Cell Research. The tests showed that the fat stem cells inhibited the growth of cancer cells. - We started our experiments with an opposite hypothesis. We thought that fat stem cells would get cancer cells to grow, and we also had time to fret over that our hypothesis was wrong. But then it dawned on us that this result of course is much more interesting, says 23-year-old Heidi Guldborg Møller from the group. The concrete results of the experiments, according to the students the main reason why they have won ESC Research Award for best presentation at the international conference The European Students' Conference in Berlin, where else they were up against more experienced talent from around the world. - Some of the others had spent years on their projects and research, and yet we won with something that is the result of a shorter period of concentrated work. But it is both the result and that it was easy to explain our work to the jury, who praised us for a very educational presentation, said 25-year-old Andreas Pagh Rasmussen.

New tests await

Despite the price, and praise from jury members and supervisors are the five medical students humble about the scope of their funds possible meaning. The jury listens attentively to the presentation from the Danish studerende.- The results come from a very limited set of data, and it obviously means something for how much weight to give to it. But the price is still a recognition that we can use, says 22-year-old Hjalte Holm Andersen. Experimental results support the research on the relationship between cancer and stem cells, as Associate Professor Meg Duroux is already focused on. Therefore, she will also seek means to follow the success up with new tests, and she focused on continued help from his award-winning student: - I am so glad to see that the encouragement and financial support for a project at an early semester may result in high impact at international level. The price is a big step forward for this young group of researchers. Now I hope that they will continue their studies and continue with a focus on cancer in the coming semester, she says. The student sends a lot of credit back in the supervisor's direction because she believed in them and gave them the freedom to experiment. - We have been enormously fortunate in that we have been allowed to do the things we have. Although we had no experience, we have had a very free environment to express ourselves in the laboratory, so our supervisor has shown us great confidence, says 22-year-old Kasper Bendix Johnsen. Meanwhile, the five classmates found out that they work well as a group. Also in adversity: - As some of our attempts at the start failed, the mood was not so high. But we are good to "jam" and ping-pongee with each other, so we move on. We play a lot of football, but we can also work very hard together when it comes, explains the 23-year-old Anders Christian Kaa. Source: AAU